'Yes, MOMMY.'
Irritation splashed across Gator's face; then he gave a grunt. He turned to CAG. 'Back to normal, I'd say.'
CAG regarded me for a few minutes, and I saw an odd mixture of compassion and anger in his face. 'No, he won't ever be,' CAG said. 'No man would be.' He stood, motioning to Gator. 'Let's see if we can get him on his feet.'
I waved off their assistance and stood slowly. My vision wavered a bit, then settled down. My gut was letting me breathe, and my knees didn't feel like they were about to buckle anymore. Physically, I was all right.
'You up to talking now?' CAG asked. It wasn't really a question.
I nodded. 'Yeah, let's get it over with.'
CAG led the way to the admiral's private door to the mess, rapped gently, then stuck his head in. 'They're here, Admiral.' Gator's hand was clamped around my arm again, just above the elbow. Hell, if he kept touching me like that, we were gonna start going steady. I shook him off.
CAG motioned us in. As I stepped across the hatch and into the admiral's office, I tried to remember one thing. I was a good stick, one of the best. The admiral knew what I could do ? hell, we'd been on three cruises together so far. He'd been in command of the Carrier Battle Group when I'd flown my ass off over the Arctic, and he'd been on board Jefferson from D.C. when everything went to shit in the Spratly Islands. And I knew him ? he was a good guy.
The admiral knew I was a good stick. Even though I'd just killed four aviators.
3
God save me from good sticks. Whether they're male or female, they're never modest. They stalk the passageways of the carriers like grounded gods, arrogant and barely touching the deck. They can do no wrong, every trap is a three-wire, and they never, ever screw the pooch. I know. I was one of them.
It can't last forever, of course. Sooner or later, they come down hard. Sometimes they're the only ones who know it, but you can see it in their faces. It starts with a quiet, reflective couple of days, an unusual look of thoughtfulness on the pilot's face. That fades ? faster than you think. What you get at the end of it is a pilot who thinks, one who lets his mind rule his reflexes instead of the other way, one who knows he or she is mortal. In short, you get a better pilot. One who's likely to come back.
Of the five officers standing in front of me, only two had been through that process. One was Gator, Bird Dog's RIO. The other was CAG. Bird Dog, Skeeter, and Lieutenant Laurel, Skeeter's backseater, were still too young to ever admit that they were mortal. God knows, Bird Dog was long overdue. I'd known it was coming.
But God, not like this. Never like this.
'Sit down.' I gestured at the ring of chairs arrayed in front of my seat. 'Tell me about it.'
A knock on the door interrupted Bird Dog before he could even start. Lab Rat opened the door and stuck his head in. 'May I sit in, Admiral?'
I nodded, a little bit annoyed that he'd caught me in a slipup. Or was it? Of course I'd wanted to hear the details first myself ? deserved it, in fact. I was in command of this Carrier Battle Group, and everything that happened and every man and woman under my command were my direct and personal responsibility.
But Lab Rat, my senior Intelligence Officer, was right too. The first retelling of an incident is often the most accurate one, filled with the details that immediately stand out in each pilot's mind. Intelligence Officers such as Commander 'Lab Rat' Busby thrived on that stuff, raw, hard data straight from the pilot's lips.
I pointed at the couch. Lab Rat slid into his accustomed space and perched on the worn cushions, his pale blue eyes alive and expectant behind thick spectacles.
'You were saying,' I said to Bird Dog, although he hadn't been.
Bird Dog looked pale and shaken, as rocky as I'd ever seen him. He looked like he'd been about to keel over. A good thing ? if he hadn't, he'd be popped tall at attention in front of my desk instead of sitting down. I had to know what had hit him and hit him hard.
'We were just flying escort on the Snoopy,' he started, a dazed, almost surreal quality in his voice. 'Just a normal flight. Catch up on some formation, that's all.'
Bird Dog led me back through the sequence of actions that had led to the downing of Snoopy 631, only occasionally stopping to backtrack or fill in some critical detail. About mid-debrief, his voice took on an eerie singsong sort of tone. I shot a glance at Gator, noticed his eyes were fixed on his pilot, a worried expression on his face.
Skeeter and his RIO were another story altogether. They didn't look happy, no, not that. More like relieved. And worried ? deeply worried. Laurel, in particular, a young woman on her first cruise with the squadron, looked shaken.
'So I circled, looking for chutes,' Bird Dog finished. 'There were none in the air, so I checked at sea level. None there. No chutes, no bodies, no rafts. Nothing.' I was almost relieved when his eerie voice stopped.
'Why did you choose to use the Sidewinders versus the Sparrows?' CAG asked, after shooting a glance at me. 'What about the range?'
'I thought I could make it,' Bird Dog said, his voice almost inaudible. 'I thought I could-'
'Admiral, if I may,' Gator broke in, attempting a save.
I shook him off. As admirable as RIO loyalty is, this one was all Bird Dog's.
'You thought you could make it,' I repeated.
'My Sidewinders were the weapon of choice,' Skeeter said, the first words out of the young aviator. Even as junior as he was, he should have known better than to break into an admiral's inquisition. His gaze met mine, confident and aggressive. 'The Sidewinders were working, Admiral. Bird Dog had a bad load-out, that's all.'
'That's all?' I came up out of my chair like a snake had bit me on the ass and leaned across the heavy desk to stare at him. I planted both hands palms down on it, and raised my voice. 'That's all?'
A deadly, cold chill invaded the room. Skeeter and Laurel were slowly tumbling to what Bird Dog already knew ? that over-confidence had killed four aviators in that E-2.
It wasn't my intent to be unkind, although kindness sometimes has little bearing on the decisions I'm forced to make. It was a combination of factors sheer anger and sorrow over losing the four aviators, maybe the possibility that I could bring home the seriousness of this to the two junior ones in front of me. Maybe I could catch them before they made their mistakes, before they repeated Bird Dog's. But not unless they knew just how deadly, deadly serious it was.
'I mean ? uh-' Skeeter fell silent, following a quick jab in his ribs by his backseater.
Bird Dog looked oddly crumpled, a still, motionless figure, in his seat. He was frozen in time, a time maybe only thirty minutes earlier when it had all happened. It was replaying in front of his eyes, in an endless loop, his imagination adding details that had never really happened. Things like the sound of the E-2 pilot's voice just before the missile hit, how clear and obvious it had been that he should have tried the Sparrow first, the fireball growing in size and intensity every time he thought about it.
I motioned to CAG, who reached out and shook him by the shoulder. 'Snap out of it, Bird Dog.'
Bird Dog looked startled, as though we'd awakened him from a sleepwalking episode. He glanced around the room, his eyes finally settling on the one most familiar figure in the room. 'I blew it, Gator,' he said softly, ignoring the rest of us. 'That bird ? they were counting on me. And I blew it.'
'You got a bad missile,' Gator said gently. It wasn't a denial, it was just another reason.
But bad missiles happen, even during peacetime missions. Or what should have been a peacetime mission. I looked over at Lab Rat, sitting on the couch. He was practically quivering in eagerness to ask a few questions. I started to shake my head, then thought better of it.
If ever a man has been accurately pegged by his squadron mates, it was Lab Rat Busby. He was a small man, pale blond hair cropped close to his head, with brilliant blue eyes that made him look almost albino. He was tougher
